Last week (25th May 2011), JISC Collections held an interesting workshop in London for various stakeholders in the area of Hybrid OA journals – publishers, funders, librarians – which looked at some of the issues in their pricing, sustainability and growth.

One of the observations from publishers was that there is now a general acceptance in the publishing community that Open Access was here to stay and that, as publishers, they had to accommodate OA approaches within their business models. This is now being more widely reflected and does represent a change over the last few years and is a positive move.

One major question was whether Hybrid OA journals – subscription journals that charge additional fees for OA articles – were a transition model or an option which would remain as a part of a future publishing landscape and used against a larger subscription base.

Discussion touched on, but did not explore, the idea of what transition actually means. Transition to what? One view, perhaps the most common in the community, is that hybrid journals are a transition between Journal X being subscription-only, moving to funding from a mix of OA fees and subscriptions, before emerging as a completely OA journal. This was the model that was discussed when hybrid publication was first mooted and introduced.

Since then, developments in other models of research communication have introduced another transition possibility. This second and more radical view is that these could be transition models in allowing Journal X to remain operational as a half-way house in the medium term – but that the future state might be an OA future without Journal X at all. Models such at PLoS One and Scientific Reports, both discussed, might show the way towards a different style of dissemination.

Another significant discussion area was pricing. Some publishers at the event made a case as to why a ten percent rise in OA articles and fees would not mean a ten percent reduction in subscription costs for a hybrid journal. This lack of transparent linkage between rise in additional OA fees and reduction in subscription costs has led to suspicions of “double-dipping“. Although one publisher was of the opinion that the idea of “double-dipping” was promoted by and limited to librarians, experience at the CRC shows this is a fairly common unprompted reaction from academic authors to the idea of hybrid publication. This remains as a credibility issue for publishers that they realise that they have to address, probably by some form of transparent linkage between pre-payment and post-payment levels.

There seems to be an area of difficulty for publishers in scoping hybrid models and balancing percentage increases in fees against decreases in subscription rates. For one thing, it was said that the articles in a journal may only be a part of the costs: that editorial pieces might represent a substantial part of the cost. It would be interesting to see if readers’ perceptions of value in different forms of content reflected the costs of that content: would editorial content sell as a separate piece for example, allowing closer correspondence between OA fee rise and subscription fall? Of course, it is possible that academic concerns about pricing for a journal already reflect just this issue.

Another issue is that every factor is fluid and linked. The number of articles submitted may change; the number sent for peer review may change; the number published per year or per issue may change; the number of open access fee-paid articles may change; the number of subscriptions may change. And each factor probably depends on the others and overall also relate to variables in the subscription costs and OA article charges.

Of course, this is what any commercial business is about, balancing supply, demand, production costs, price points etc. However, this is also taking place against a changing landscape. Publishers admit that, as a business, they are balancing fee and subscription levels with the view of maximising sustainable profit and they have to measure their models against their existing margin. But what if the world has changed, through technology offering possible alternatives and the financial crisis cutting available revenues, so that scholarly communication cannot or will not support past profit levels? Where is the fixed ground against which publishers can measure new models?

Is it up to customers to offer some fixed level and underwrite commercial experiment, or for the commercial organisation to gamble and create an offering which it hopes will be both sustainable and acceptable to its customers? Normal customer/ business relations may not apply when customers have no wish to risk the sustainability of a journal.

From clarity from publishers to clarity from other stakeholders. The final point from the day that I will touch on is the repeated concern throughout discussions that there is a difficulty for authors in paying open access and hybrid charges. In spite of funding agencies making money available, there is still confusion for authors as to whether the money exists, let alone how to access it. This is an area that the RCS has highlighted before, bringing together research support offices, libraries, repository and open access advisers, publishers and funders. Our survey of chemists and economists, full results forthcoming, shows that one of authors’ primary blocks to use of open access is the expense of publishing and one of the identified chief drivers that would support change would be institutional support for payments.

Funders are in favour and can supply the money; institutions are in favour and will facilitate if there is a clear process; open access advocates exist in institutions to advise; authors would value the support and information. This is an issue which *can* be solved, but we do need joint action to bring clarity for everyone involved: without this, growth in open access publication in general, let alone hybrid journals, could stall for lack of a clear, usable process.

It proved to be a successful event this past Thursday as Research Managers and Senior Library and Information Services Managers came together for a full day of presentations and discussion. The conference, organised by the CRC (specifically us working on the JISC funded RCS project), ARMA, RLUK and SCONUL focused on the growing need for integration between research support and information services.

The morning started off with introductions from Bill Hubbard (CRC), David Prosser (RLUK) and Ian Carter (ARMA), who set the appropriate tone for the day.

Provide only one place for researchers to input (and include integration with other systems),

Have the ability to mass import and check data,

Include ongoing advocacy to research staff,

Meet the needs of the different players / stakeholders (have it work for REF, and OA, etc.)

Stephen Pinfield (University of Nottingham) then gave us an introduction to the work being done at Nottingham with their OA Publishing Fund, put in place to meet the need set by Funders’ mandates. Stephen went on to describe the cost of OA publishing (Gold road) at the University of Nottingham, pointing to the Houghton Report – and commenting that it is probably the most important report for those working in this area. Stephen also described how OA publishing is generally cheaper for the University of Nottingham using this modelling.

Robert Kiley (Wellcome Trust) and Gerry Lawson (NERC) each gave us a funders’ perspective. They described some of things funders need, one thing in particular that was discussed was the need for proper grant acknowledgement and attribution, with grant number, in a standard form.

We finished off the day with small groups and then a panel discussion. There were some interesting ideas that arose, and will hopefully be taken forward:

Using the REF as a potential driver for OA content

Extending the grant period so that funds can be used for OA publishing

Standardisation of terms within these systems – including standardisation of grant acknowledgement

Further sharing of good practice

Many key players were present and it was good to get them all in the same room and let them hear each other’s thoughts and concerns.

Open Access and other developments in research and education have often been inaccurately characterised as taking place between two opposed “sides” – between publishers and institutions or their libraries.

Quite apart from the combatative nature of such a characterisation, such a picture is not helpful because of the complexity of even these two stakeholder groups (let alone the funders, and the researchers as the key players in research).

For instance, institutions often have University Presses as publishing businesses within their organisations. There are purely Open Access publishers who have a vested interest in the success of the OA model. There are traditional publishers like Springer who claim to be happy to provide any particular access model wanted by the user community, as Wim van der Stelt explained at a recent RSP event.

As a company selling educational resources, it would be interesting to see how certain issues may be resolved. For example, would they recommend OA educational resources as an alternative to their own products for cash-strapped students or for staff that want to use good material from elsewhere? If such OA resources – or research-ouput resources – were CC licenced for non-commercial use, would it matter if the institution was being run as a commercial enterprise?

Another interesting evening event organised by RIN last week in the series Research Information in Transition looked at the topics of data handling and data sharing.

I was not surprised to see that many of the issues we’ve identified as having a bearing on the take-up of Green/Gold open access also raised their heads in connection with data.

Andrew Young from Liverpool John Moores University talked about the challenges of persuading researchers to put their data into an institutional repository even when it was a conditionof their grant. Policies, systems and guidance may all be in place but further incentives seem to be needed.

Carole Goble from Manchester University described designing systems to encourage the sharing of data between scientists working on the SysMO (Systems Biology of Microorganisms) project. Some were reluctant to share – among other reasons, becasue data sharing isn’t recognised by the academic reward system.

Kevin Ashley, Director of the Digital Curation Centre, addressed similar issues, stressing the need for interaction between policies and behaviours: policies on their own don’t have enough effect.

Our discussions with researchers about open access are leading us to reach the same conclusion. So the challenge for policy makers and funders is to enmesh the open sharing of research results with the attainment of academic prestige, promotion and kudos. Altruism is not enough.

Yesterday I helped out at the RSP event, “Doing it Differently”, held at the Sheffield Cathedral. It was a very interesting, full day. The series of talks showcased alternative approaches to repositories, open access and scholarly communications, with the audience mostly repository managers and others working directly with repositories.

So many different and exciting things happening in this area!

Pat Lockley, from the University of Nottingham gave a lively presentation on Xpert, which is a “distributed repository of e-learning resources”. Stephanie Meece discussed the difficulties of managing repository deposits that are non-text based, and demonstrated the amazing work done at the University Arts London. Their repository, UAL Research Online, does a fantastic job of storing and showcasing non-text based research material. Jason Hoyt from Mendeley described some of their new developments as well as their involvement with the JISC funded Direct User Repository Access (DURA) project. Sally Handford, also from the University of Nottingham, described her involvement in iTunes U at Nottingham. These projects are definitely worth checking out. I could go on, but I won’t.

You can find the programme for the day, as well as slides and handouts to these talks and others here.